World Bank sides with Vietnam’s agricultural development strategy

At the working session, Minister Le Minh Hoan exchanged a range of topics, notably the development strategy of Vietnam’s agriculture industry, overcoming challenges on land concentration, agricultural development supports in the Mekong Delta area, and the private sector’s investment attraction…

Ms. Manuela strongly appreciated the efforts of both MARD and WB throughout the last period, particularly the agricultural growth in the Mekong Delta region. Thereby, the WB representative asked MARD to suggest proposals and recommendations for the organization to offer better assistance for Vietnam’s agriculture industry, following the launch of Strategy for sustainable agricultural and rural development for the period of 2021 - 2030 with a view to 2050.

Sharing his opinion, Minister Le Minh Hoan noted that this is the first time ever that Vietnam has built such a long-term strategy for the agriculture sector with the connection to rural areas.

“It demonstrates the desire to locate the agricultural industry in the socio-economic structure of the countryside and of society in general," the chief of MARD told the WB representative.

He believed that the agriculture industry will create value if it is approached from the standpoint of multi-value and trends that other economies have been through. The strategy is also an opportunity for Vietnam to draw attention and funding from many international organizations such as WB.

The agriculture leader also stated that one of the key issues is the stagnancy in production, fragmentation in scale that have led to hurdles in applying and evaluating the adjustments in strategy.

Thereby, it is required to engage the participation of the private sector, the involvement of foreign firms and large corporations in the field of agricultural and rural areas.

For WB’s side, Ms. Manuela evaluated that the insufficient cultivation land area is a huge impediment of Vietnam’s agriculture industry to draw new investments.

According to the World Bank Regional Vice President for East Asia and Pacific, when the investments from the private sector are attracted, the agriculture industry will not only stop at the raw products but processing is necessary to boost the products’ values. Besides, she also mentioned the formation of sets of criteria is a requirement to boost the quality of items.

Ms. Manuela V. Ferro affirmed that the WB is looking forward to working with Vietnam to build sustainable agriculture, solve the problem of land concentration, support agricultural development in the Mekong Delta and invest in technology to improve productivity and quality of agricultural products as well as save and preserve natural resources.